The Valentine's Day 2022 Playbook
Valentine's Day 2022 lands on a Monday — and the last time that happened was 2011, a world that no longer exists for comparison purposes. So this week, Vonda brings the highlights of the Flower Clique team's Valentine's Day Playbook webinar straight to the podcast: how to project your numbers, rally your team like it's the Super Bowl, get your website match-fit, and market with the one tactic that beats everything else for the money. If you want the full session, slides and all, watch the full webinar here.
Know your game: projecting a Monday Valentine's Day
The best Valentine's Days fall on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when customers have time to plan and order early; the worst are Saturdays and Sundays. Since 2011 is too distant to be useful, the hosts recommend building your projections from your last three years — you'll likely have one of your best, one of your worst, and one in the middle, which together give you a realistic picture to plan inventory and staffing against.
Rally your team before the big game
Lori's non-negotiable: have the staff meeting, and have it now. Thanks to pandemic turnover, as many as half of shops have employees who've never worked a Valentine's Day — or never worked one at your shop. Treat the meeting like watching game film: front of house and back of house may not be "on the field" at the same time, but each side needs to know what the other is doing. Bring snacks, be enthusiastic (your tone sets theirs), and try what Lori calls the crayon exercise: you draw the picture of how you want the holiday to go, then hand everyone a crayon and ask them to help fill it in. When the team helps paint the plan, they have skin in the game during execution week. One prerequisite — you can't run this meeting without your own playbook finished first.
Set up your designers and salespeople to win
For the design team, it comes down to clearly communicated, realistic expectations: how many designs per hour, who's answering phones, who's prepping on the weekend — decided and announced in advance. Practical speed tips include assembly-line designing, giving designers an assistant who preps everything (which can make a designer five times faster), and never designing one arrangement at a time.
On the sales side, put people where their personality shines — the vibrant talker belongs on the phone or the floor, because as the Nordstrom hiring philosophy goes, you can teach a skill but you can't teach attitude. Every person in the shop should know the specials cold, and each salesperson should write their own version of the script in their own voice. Salespeople need to know what's in the cooler so they can move abundant inventory ("our designers just put together the most gorgeous lavender roses..."), paint a visual picture that matches what will actually arrive, and sell add-ons aggressively: if a customer is ready to spend $300, every penny of it should stay in your store instead of the shop next door. And drivers matter too — cheerful, well-dressed, briefed on not-home tags, tip-over policy, and call procedures, because they're the face at the door.
The website is the MVP
Kami's case is simple: your website is an extra order-taking employee, a menu for phone customers who browse while they talk, and a sales tool for your staff. Her Valentine's musts: set the menu yourself — make the website match your cooler, not the other way around; skinny the mix, starting with the Valentine's category and rinse-and-repeating through the rest; accept product crossover (more reds and pinks in get-well and birthday than usual); and remember less is more — pages of product are impossible to fill and overwhelming for shoppers, especially the men buying at the last minute. Above all, lay eyes on every product and make sure it's priced profitably — those $39 and $49 showpieces still lurking on homepages make no one money at this year's flower costs.
The best marketing bang for your buck: pre-calling
Lori's top marketing move is pre-calling your best customers. Pull your top spenders from your POS, block off dedicated chunks of time (no answering the shop phone between calls), and aim to finish by early February. You'll hit voicemail about 80% of the time — and that's fine. You're not telemarketing; you're reminding last year's customers that Valentine's Day is coming and offering to check it off their list early, which smooths out last-minute chaos and helps you balance inventory during a container and flower shortage. She closes with the mindset that holds it all together: choose courage over comfort. Coming off a hard Christmas and into another challenging year, courage — not comfort — is what moves your business ahead.
Key takeaways
- Project Monday-Valentine's sales from your own last three years, not from 2011.
- Hold a full-team staff meeting now — assume half your staff has never worked your shop's Valentine's Day, and let them help color in the plan.
- Skinny your website to match your cooler, and reprice everything for this year's elevated flower costs.
- Pre-call your top customers in blocked-off time; even the voicemails drive early orders.
- Have a weather plan and a COVID plan before the week arrives — and choose courage over comfort.